She's More
by Caramelchan
Summary: Companion piece to And So Is He. Same story, different point of view. TATE


Disclaimer: Don't own NCIS or its characters. Don't own "She's More" by Andy Griggs.

Full Summary: Tony remembers how he used to feel about his partner.

Spoilers: Most of season 2... Major spoilers for SWAK and Twilight

AN: I changed the ending of Twilight, as in, decided that it didn't happen.

AN2: I just went through and fixed all the grammar errors that **KitsuneLauz **pointed out. Thanks!!

* * *

_I like blue eyes; hers are green. Not like the woman of my dreams…_

_And her hair's not quite, as long as I had planned…

* * *

_

I'd always pictured myself with a tall girl, 5'8" at least, who had waist length blonde and blue eyes, a girl like the princesses of my childhood fantasies. A girl like the girls I chased in High School, but grown up. Almost all of my adult life, I've slept with a different woman each week. Not that there was much of a difference, considering they were all tall with blue eyes and blonde hair. But all the while, I felt nothing. I felt nothing for any of them. I searched, in vain, for my true love, without realising what was staring me in the face. I know I shouldn't date a co-worker. I know that it makes people stupid. I also know that in my line of work, stupid costs lives. But I am willing to risk my life. True love is more important. But for us, it isn't really risk. We trust each other so completely that we can be as confident with our lives in the other's hands as we can be in our own.

* * *

_5'3'' isn't tall; she's not the girl I pictured at all…_

_And those paint-by-number fantasies I've had…_

* * *

I often try and remember when my feelings for her started. It wasn't when I first met her, that's for sure. True, I wanted to sleep with her, but my hormone levels were like those of a sex-crazed teenager back then. I would have slept with anything in a skirt, and she would have been a good catch. A secret service agent! Protector of the President, she still often boasts.

When I first met her, she was the sexiest thing I'd ever met.

* * *

_No it wasn't at first sight, but the moment I looked twice,_

_I saw the woman; I was born to love…_

* * *

It seems strange to me that I once thought of her as a 'thing'. Just something I could sleep with and then forget about. I've learned so much about the world since then.

And all of it, she taught me.

Like dancing. One day, some time ago, we were very honoured to be in the company of a winner of the Medal of Honour, Ernie Yost. But he was an old man; he had no memory and he had dementia. I felt sorry for him, until something happened that made him the luckiest man on earth. He asked her to dance with him.

And she did.

Being the person of beautiful kindness that she is, she danced with him, simply because she knew that it would make him happy. I watched the pair of them, trying to keep a steady expression, but I was sure that my inside feelings would soon be betrayed by my face. Pride, that someone I felt so strongly for could be so wonderful; desperation, a yearning to step forward and take her in my arms myself; and there was something else. Could it have been jealousy? I think I would have given anything and everything to be in Ernie Yost's place that day, especially when I saw that when they had finished their slow waltz and were standing apart, she was crying. Never before had I seen her cry… she isn't the person that cries. This made me more eager to come forward; to have her pressed to my chest while I comforted her would be amazing. But I couldn't do it. I'll probably never get a chance like that again.

* * *

She's such a strong person; when she danced was the only time I've ever seen her cry. Maybe she sees tears as a sign of weakness.

I've seen every expression from her. Probably because I spend so many empty seconds watching her. How she moves her hands when she's talking; how she grips her pen when she writes; how she sometimes twirls her hair around her fingers when she thinks. I know all her mood, all her gestures, just by looking.

But sometimes she'll catch me. If she looks up when I'm watching her work, her anger flares up. Not real anger; that comes when a guilty man slips away from between our fingers. No, when she catches me, she isn't angry. Inside, she's flattered. She can't be angry with me. Not really.

That's just one of the many ways that we flirt: arguing. Poking fun at each other's failures and successes with the opposite sex and about anything else in general.

Other ways, physical contact, for example, that lasts a little too long to be accidental.

And did I mention that we've both see each other naked?

* * *

Oh, the day she stormed into my hotel room after Gibbs was one of the best days of my life. A moment that made my day brilliant for me; just a wink of an eye.

What happened was, I had woken up with an iguana in my bed because we were in Cuba, doing some work down there. I was shocked to wake up next to something green with huge buggy eyes, so I let out a scream. This brought them running from their respective rooms into mine, their guns ready to fire.

When they saw that I had just got scared and woken them because there was an iguana in my bed, their reactions were mixed: Gibbs was irritated; she was amused. I looked down and realised that it wasn't just the iguana that was making her smirk behind Gibb's back.

I picked up the nightstand and covered myself with it, attempting to regain a tiny ounce of dignity.

_Note to self: buy some pyjamas._

When I looked back at her, she was still smirking, her lips slightly pouted. And then she winked, a move that haunted me for many days and nights. Every time I did or said, or even thought, something she might find funny, all I could see was her winking; a simple flirtatious wink.

It threw the petrol onto some sparks of curiosity that I already had: did I want to sleep with her; did I want to kiss her; did I want to be her man? Did I like her as more than a friend? I'd always wondered, but never known. But now I do.

* * *

I've seen her in many different outfits: I've seen her dress as a teenager; I've seen her in the morning, after she slept under her desk; I've seen her in her pyjamas. Hell, I've seen her wearing nothing! But for a long time, I never saw her dressed up to go out. But the day I did will stick in my mind forever.

I can't even remember the circumstances now… it might have been an undercover operation or she might have been just 'going out'. If that was the case, I was very jealous of her date, because by that time, I'd fallen for her.

And I'd fallen hard.

So hard, that I physically had to concentrate on not letting my jaw drop. I didn't want her to know what was in my head.

I remember my legs taking me around the desk to stand in front of her, my body walking in autopilot while my brain worked overtime.

My hands travelled from their place by my side to her hips, where they took hold of the soft fabric of her dress and tugged it lightly, bringing the neckline a little lower than was acceptable for such a good Catholic girl. Then I was pulling the shoulder straps down so they lay just around her upper arms. How I managed to get my hands from her hips to her shoulders without touching anything in between was a mystery to me. And then, how I managed to put my hands in her hair, without bringing her lips to meet mine, was just as much of a puzzle. I shook her hair out of its perfectly combed style, into a more fluffy style and then, to finish the look, I blew gently on her, clearing her hair off her face and causing her nose to wrinkle a little.

* * *

_Her laughter fills my soul,_

_And when I hold her I don't wanna let go,_

* * *

Every movement, every expression, every twitch that she made during those ten seconds of interaction was safely logged in my brain so I could never forget it. I couldn't tell you what month it was, but I remember every second I spent with her that day.

And then there was the wet tee shirt photo. I can't believe I was so mean to her. That photo could have ended any chance I'd ever had with her because I was so stupid with it.

What happened was, I went to Panama City on Spring Break. To get drunk and look at the girls, maybe sleep with a few. To take my mind off her for a bit. But I really hit the jackpot on my last night…

At one of the bars I stopped at that day, there was a display on the wall of "Miss Wet Tee Shirt: Hall of Fame". I stopped to look, as you do, and I noticed that there was something familiar about Miss Wet Tee Shirt 1984. It took me a moment, in my drunken state; to work out exactly what it was that was so familiar, but when I did, I couldn't stop laughing. The smart and sensible girl that I thought I knew had managed to get herself involved in a wet tee shirt competition. But not just involved! She won! And after she'd told me that she and her friends had kept their dignity.

Oh I had a lot of fun with that picture…

* * *

_When it comes to her,_

_I can't get enough…_

* * *

After teasing her about it for around a week, I got rid of the photo. It wasn't really fair on her, even if it was an amazingly sexy picture. I would have loved to keep it, but I had to try and get her to trust me again. That meant staying true to my word and destroying every copy of it I had. The one's on my computer, the one on my PDA and on my mobile and the hard copies I had laying around my flat.

Each and every one got deleted. The only one I couldn't guarantee was gone was the one I'd sent to Gibbs, but we were quits on that. She'd sent the 'cowboys' one anyway.

It worked. She didn't hate me. In fact, it wasn't that long after the incident with the photo that she first showed definite signs of liking me and caring for me. But between the photo and the signs, I nearly died.

It was my own stupidity that brought my downfall. I went and opened a letter that was full of plague germs and breathed them in. I could have handled that, if I hadn't managed to infect her at the same time. And on top of that, she had a cold and a weakened immune system so she was taken into quarantine with me.

Not that that was a bad thing… spending a couple of days in a room with her. But the risk that I had made her ill outweighed the chance to spend time with her. I felt so guilty; laying in that bed, thinking that we were both about to die, knowing that it was my fault… it was almost too much to bear. It would have been, if she hadn't been there with me.

When I got the news that I was infected with plague, I was devastated. I was going to die and I'd never told her how I felt. And worse, she was infected too, so she told me.

My condition got worse: I started coughing blood and I could hardly breathe. Dr Brad Pitt and Nurse Emma were standing around me, taking care of me. And she was just standing with them, watching. I couldn't help wondering how come she wasn't ill, which miracle had saved her from the same fate as mine. She didn't deserve to die like that, in pain, coughing blood. She claimed that she was stronger than me, that she had managed to beat the germs. I didn't believe it. I later found out that she wasn't infected and was just staying for me. She risked her life to stay with me, to keep me company. But in the end, it seemed that she'd risked her life to watch me die. All I could think was that I had infected her, but she was going to die alone, once I'd gone.

I couldn't let that happen.

_I love her_, I thought, _I can't do this to her._

Pretty soon after that, I was unable to keep myself awake. My eyelids had been growing heavy and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't keep them open. I was sure that if I fell asleep, I would die. I told myself that I was staying awake for her, but even that didn't work. I fell into a deep sleep. The next thing I remember was Gibbs hitting me round the head and telling me that I wasn't going to die. So I didn't.

Later that day, once I had recovered a little, I went to sleep again. She had left a long time ago and I was alone, under the blue lights and there was nothing to do but sleep.

I awoke hearing voices outside the 'bubble' that I had been staying in. I kept quiet though, pretended I was still asleep so I could listen. The sounds were muffled, but I listened intently and made out their voices. One of them I didn't really recognise. It could have been Dr Brad Pitt, but I couldn't be sure. The other was hers. I could pick out that voice from anywhere.

The hiss of the airlock and the doors opening, then the sound of someone trying to be quiet as they crossed the room to a bed. I knew it was her. She didn't go to the far bed this time though. She took the one next to mine and lay on it. My heart started pounding; she wanted to be near to me. She did care.

* * *

_More than I dreamed of, more than any man deserves,_

_I couldn't ask for more than a love like hers…_

* * *

After I got the plague, I had to stay off work for a while, so I didn't see her as much as I would have liked. And when I did see her, there was never a good moment to talk to her. She'd be with Gibbs or McGee or Abby… I couldn't talk with any of them around.

And before I knew it, I was back at work. I couldn't stand it at home, alone, without her. Coming back to work early was the best thing I could have done. It brought us together, finally.

On my first day back, I put my life out for hers, twice.

She was panicking a lot. I don't know why, but she lost it. She was ready to shoot her foot off to get rid of the snake. Lucky that I bravely snatched her from the snake's clutches, or she might have done something stupid.

Okay, it wasn't a big snake. Or a dangerous one. But we both thought it was.

Trust McGee to ruin a moment.

And then, minutes later, he went and tried to open a trunk that was wired with a bomb. I couldn't let her get blown up, but I couldn't leave McGee either. So I told them both to run.

Twice in a day, she could have died and I still wouldn't have had chance to talk to her. I needed her to know what I was thinking.

So the next day, when she took a shot in her vest while protecting Gibbs, I decided that enough was enough. I had to tell her.

* * *

I learnt another thing about life when Ernie Yost visited. He told me that there was too much waste in the world and it didn't need adding to.

So I didn't.

* * *

We went back to the bullpen, after the gunfight on the rooftops. She was aching from being shot and I was aching from the plague. Gibbs took her off his protection duty and sent her home; she needed it. I went home at the same time.

We were in the elevator when I asked her to come back with me. I told her that we needed to talk. To my surprise, she didn't say 'no' straight away. In fact, she didn't say 'no' at all.

* * *

So now I'm laying here, looking back on it all. Everything that has happened that brought us closer together. We're going to get sacked for this tomorrow morning, but it's worth it for this moment. With her lying in my arms, her skin against mine under the covers is worth anything. She shifts a little in her sleep so she's lying by my side rather than using my chest as a pillow and I can see the ugly purple bruise on her stomach where she took the bullet. I put my arm across her front and pull her closer into my side and envelope her in my embrace.

We should have done this a long time ago, but I guess it was pretty unexpected. It may be unexpected, but I know that it's right.

I gently kiss her cheek and she sighs a little. With a smile, I turn out the light and live my dreams; falling asleep with her in my arms.

* * *

_So it took me by complete surprise_

_When my heart got lost in those deep green eyes_

_She's not at all what I was looking for_

_She's more_


End file.
